The Day Marty Shot his Father
by Disgarded
Summary: This is just a little snippet I wrote imagining what happened to Marty the day he shot his father. I wrote it right after the show revealed that he'd shot his dad as a kid, so if they revealed more details later, it isn't included here.


_(This was something I wrote while trying to decide if I wanted to do a story featuring Marty's background and the day he shot his father. In my mind, I imagined he'd had a fairly positive experience with the police that day, which ended up influencing his decision to become a cop himself.)_

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><p>Marty had no idea how long he'd been sitting on his front porch. Long enough to have seen the neighbor from across the street rush over to frantically apply pressure to his father's chest and shout for someone to call 911. Long enough to have witnessed the crowds gathering around the edges of the front lawn, and across the street, everyone muttering and pointing and shaking their heads. Long enough to have been told by at least three random people to just stay where he was and not move. Long enough to have emptied the contents of his stomach into the nearby bushes two times.<p>

Marty had no idea how much time had passed; he'd long since zoned out to the point where the sirens and the neighbors were just background noise, hardly heard over the rushing in his own ears.

He was surprised when someone suddenly seemed to materialize at his side. A cop. The man was young - or at least younger than his dad. Unlike his dad, though, he looked clean-cut, and didn't smell like stale beer and cigarettes.

Marty swallowed down more bile. The man hadn't said anything yet, but Marty understood why he was here. He offered his wrists to the man, wishing his hands would stop trembling.

That got his attention. The man just looked down at Marty's hands, then back up at his face.

"What's your name?"

"Marty," he answered, surprised at the rasp in his own voice.

"I'm Doug," the officer said, as if they were meeting at some kind of party or something.

Marty didn't know what to make of him, so he slowly dropped his hands, and his eyes. He had this picture in his head - he imagined suddenly jumping up and sprinting away only to be gunned down by the cop. Something inside him told him he should do it; it would be fitting for him to get gunned down the same day as his father.

"Marty, I need to ask - where's the gun?" The cop broke into his thoughts in his strange, incredibly polite way.

Marty gestured to the bushes against the porch. "There." He didn't think he'd vomited directly on it, but he wasn't entirely sure.

The cop went over to retrieve the gun, only to sit back down after tucking it into a bag he'd produced. "Looks like you had some stomach trouble, huh?"

Marty shrugged.

"Hey, I've got to get this gun to my partner. Why don't you come with me and we'll head down to the station and see if we can find you some 7-up or something?"

Politest. Arrest. Ever. Marty thought. "Just cuff me and get it over with. Please."

The cop didn't even look at him this time. Marty watched as his eyes seemed to skim over the scene without really looking at any one thing.

"You're not getting arrested, kiddo."

Marty automatically frowned at the nickname. "So I get away with murder? Just like that?"

The cop turned and faced Marty fully. "The EMTs are pretty sure your dad's gonna make it, so it isn't murder, and according to witnesses, it was self-defense."

He continued before Marty could argue. "Look, kid - Marty. I figure you might want to get away from this crowd, right? Come with me to the station and you can sip some 7-up or something while we get in touch with your mom. Once she's there, we'll sit down and figure this all out, all right?"

Marty exhaled forcefully and dropped his head into his hands. "She's at work. You can't make her come in the middle of her shift, they'll fire her."

Marty looked up at the cop, valiantly working to keep the tears in his eyes from spilling over. "I'll come with you. You can do anything to me. Just please don't call her until 5. Please."

Marty glanced away, horrified at the way his voice had broken at the last word. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the cop glance down at his watch, then look out over the scene again.

"Well it's 3:30 now, so I suppose we can stall." He stood suddenly, and stepped off the porch.

"Come on, Marty. Let's get out of here."

Marty followed the police officer away from his house, eyes boring into the older man's back to avoid all the stares he knew he was receiving.

A woman waited next to the police car, another officer. Marty's cop (he had a hard time thinking of the guy as "Doug", even in his own mind) handed her the bag with the gun, and muttered something to her that he couldn't catch. Then the cop opened the front door, and gestured for Marty to get in.

He hesitated. "Aren't I supposed to ride in the back? Behind the bars?"

"Nope. Not under arrest, remember? I'm just giving you a lift."

"What about your partner? You gonna make her ride in back?"

"Nope. She's gonna stay here and finish up. She'll catch a ride back later."

Marty couldn't think of any response to that. He didn't know if it was normal for cops to leave their partners at a crime scene. And he'd definitely never heard of people like him riding up front. If the guy hadn't been so clean-cut and… _cop_ -looking, Marty would've had to wonder if he was about to meet some sort of unfortunate end.

He got lost in his thoughts again, imagining all the ways a kid like him could end up behind a dumpster in an alley somewhere. But then the guy had to go and surprise him again.

"Hey, do you like donuts?"

"What?" Marty was completely thrown by the question. It almost sounded like the start of a bad joke.

"Do you like donuts? Come on, you have to at least suspect that I like them. It's like a bad joke."

Marty swallowed uncomfortably, wondering if mind-reading was something cops studied.

"I do, by the way. Like donuts."

"Sure, I guess." Marty couldn't even remember the last time he'd had a donut beyond the mini chocolate ones his mom sometimes kept in the kitchen for a quick breakfast food.

Ten minutes later they were pulling into a donut shop not too far from his house - not that Marty had ever been there. He half expected to find a dozen cops inside, relaxing with their donuts. Instead, they entered to find a mostly empty shop.

"Hey Doug!" the woman behind the counter called. "You brought me a new customer!"

"This is my friend Marty. Marty, this is Diane."

The woman smiled at him, "Hey, Marty! I've got some special pumpkin donuts today if you're interested."

Marty looked doubtfully at the variety of donuts displayed behind the glass. What the hell were they even doing here anyway?

"Pumpkin?" the cop was saying, "it's the middle of July. Shouldn't it be pineapple or something?"

Diane shrugged. "I was in a mood, what can I say?"

The cop nudged Marty gently in the shoulder. "She makes everything from scratch here. Best place in town."

Marty nodded, still not sure exactly what he was supposed to be doing. The cop had already pointed to the donut he wanted behind the counter, and Diane was getting it out for him.

"What'll you have, Marty? Take your pick."

Marty shrugged again. "A plain one, I guess. Do they have those?"

Diane nodded. "Sure thing, sweetie. Those are the best for dipping." She bent to extract Marty's plain donut.

They ended up sitting at a small table in the corner of the shop. The cop with his donut and coffee - which made no sense to Marty seeing how it was about 80 degrees outside - and Marty with his donut and a Sprite.

Marty stared out the shop window, his mind drifting in a sort of surreal detachment. He was outwardly calm, but a small part of him inside was screaming that he'd never see his house again, no matter what the cop said. The sad thing was that Marty couldn't decide whether that thought made him happy or sad.

Upon considering, Marty realized that he didn't feel happy _or_ sad. All he felt now was numb, and slightly queasy.

The officer cleared his throat and Marty looked over, surprised to see that the man was finished with his coffee and his donut. Marty wondered if he'd really been spaced out for that long, or if cops were just quick eaters. As if he could read his mind, the cop answered his question aloud.

"It's 4:30 already, so we should probably start heading to the station."

Marty got a bag from the lady to save his donut in, and before he knew it they were weaving through traffic again.

It was just a couple minutes after 5 when they finally pulled into the station.


End file.
